Dev Chat Summary: January 11th (4.7.1 week 5)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from January 11th (agendaSlack archive).

4.7.1 Update

2017 Release Schedule

  • 4.7.1 will NOT be last in the 4.7 branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch"., so it’s best to start on anything that needs to go in 4.7.2 immediately
  • Proposal from @samuelsidler:
    • Since we don’t have a set release date for WordPress 4.8, I’d like to propose we look at applicable 4.7.x issues about once a month, and decide if we should ship a release.
    • For 4.7.2, I think we should take a look at issues at the beginning of February, during devchat, and decide if the issues warrant a release, then ship about a week later.
    • That would mean we’d be looking at a release around February 14, but we’d update the schedule after looking at the specific issues.
    • We’d want to evaluate issues the week of February 6 and make a call.
    • I think we said regressions and minor bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. fixes are okay in 4.7 at the moment, but we can evaluate other fixes on a case-by-case basis.
  • General agreement on approach, though date for 4.7.2 to be confirmed in February
  • Plan to choose someone soon to lead 4.7.2, maybe at or before next week’s devchat, to keep things moving along. @jnylen0 @aaroncampbell @voldemortensen @swissspidy interest in leading that or future releases. If you have interest, pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” @samuelsidler as he’s compiling a list of those interested.
  • @davidakennedy: I’d imagine we’ll package up default theme updates more in minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality.. Though, we can also release those whenever to .org. I’d like to think through a schedule for that. Maybe looking at things monthly, and making a decision.

TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. Tickets

  • #39309: Secure WordPress Against Infrastructure Attacks
    • @paragoninitiativeenterprises: propose making it a point of focus for 4.8
    • @aaroncampbell: may not fit as a focus for 4.8, since those should be in the editor, customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings., and APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. areas. But good to talk about and try to figure out steps forward.
    • @paragoninitiativeenterprises: recommend against punting too far into the future
    • @samuelsidler: let’s think through how to implement it and work on patches for that, then decide which release to put it in
    • @westonruter: Security and performance hardening are ongoing and not limited to focuses
    • @paragoninitiativeenterprises: would like to see this land ASAP, will work on a patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. with necessary tests and any necessary back-compat and post to the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.
  • #38418: Add telemetry (aka usage data collection) as opt-in feature in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.)
    • @lukecavanagh: thoughts from the group?
    • @brechtryckaert: personally in favor of usage data collection, but we’ll need to be very upfront about it upon release to avoid criticism; also worried what the impact would be on loading times/slowdown due to communication with the servers that store the data, would all depend on the way it’s implemented.
  • #39157: Feed returns 404 when there are no posts
    • @stevenkword: looking for feedback on approach on adding new conditionals and what to do now. Issue was addressed in 4.7 but caused a regressionregression A software bug that breaks or degrades something that previously worked. Regressions are often treated as critical bugs or blockers. Recent regressions may be given higher priorities. A "3.6 regression" would be a bug in 3.6 that worked as intended in 3.5. and code was reverted for 4.7.1.  After 4.7.0 landed, before the reversion, an updated patch was committed that resolved the regression, but it introduced new getters to WP_Query.
    • @stevenkword: would like to find a resolution for this for 4.7.2, but need some opinions how to solve it.
    • Will ping @peterwilsoncc and @dd32 to look at it

#4-7-1, #core, #dev-chat, #summary